Texas Nature Trackers: Apps

The TPWD Wildlife Diversity Program is pleased to offer a mobile app that allows Texans to contribute to science while they enjoy nature. Downloading this app enables the public and trained citizen scientists to report sightings of rare wildlife and plant life. Whether you’re hiking, camping, birding, hiking, or are simply curious about what you found, use this app to keep track of your sightings, and get expert help from other naturalists.
The Texas Nature Trackers Program coordinates citizen science for the Wildlife Division of Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, and works with volunteers to increase our understanding of more than 1000 of our most sensitive species of plants and animals. More on the Texas Nature Trackers Program here.

Once you download and install the app from the Apple iTunes Store or the Google Play Store, you’ll have a choice of several different Texas Nature Tracker Projects that highlight the species we’re interested in. We don’t list all the species, so feel free to add your sighting to All Texas Nature. Once you finish your observation, and click “Sync,” your data will be shared with TPWD and a community of online naturalists, who may verify your identification, or add one to it if you don’t know what it is.
We are continuously creating new tutorials and technical support documents.

Privacy Statement

TPWD is proud to partner with iNaturalist.org and its online community of naturalists, whose collective knowledge is helpful in identifying and validating observations from nature. TPWD Biologists administer each project and ensures that the community identification is biologically accurate. When users submit their data using the Texas Nature Trackers app, the observation and specific location information are posted online. Users may obscure or hide the specific location from the public while sharing their observation with TPWD and other naturalists. This is done by changing the “Geoprivacy” option on the Add Observation screen. Choosing “Obscured” will blur the location to the public by 6 miles, though TPWD and the user will still see the precise location. Choosing “Private” will completely hide the location from public view, though TPWD and the user will still see the precise location.

The Wildlife Diversity Program will use user-submitted data to manage rare species and reduce the threats to wildlife and plant populations. TPWD reserves the right to use user-submitted data for the highest and best conservation use, and may include it in the Texas Natural Diversity Database.